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“The God Mulligan?”
09-29-06

What would you say if I told you this new TCG’s mulligan rule allows you the opportunity to see 40% of your deck before you play your first card?

How could this be you ask?

If you’re playing in a “The Spoils” Sealed Open Beta tournament, here’s how it would work:

You build a 50 card deck.
The person going second has an opening hand size of 9 cards thanks to The Tournament Faction faction card.
In The Spoils, you are allowed to mulligan (to the bottom of your draw pile and in any order you choose) any to all of the cards in your opening hand.
With the 2 resources that start the game in play (2 cards of your 50) and a full 9 card mulligan, you’ve just done it!

Having that option, seeing 20 of 50 cards, is just one example of how The Spoils is a game of options. Now I don’t imagine you’d want to make this a habit, but if you’re looking for a certain card or combo to start your game, it doesn’t get any better than that!

This brings me to our topic of the day; how to best utilize this, the greatest mulligan rule of any C/TCG, also known as “The God Mulligan”. Deciding on what to mulligan should be based on a few simple ideas.

1. Get the resource distribution you need to attain threshold.
2. Have a character you can play on your first turn.
3. Dig for any cards that give you an early advantage.

1. Threshold
The number of trades you’re using and how high their average threshold is, will determine how many staple resources you’d like to have between the two you start with in play and ones in your starting hand. If you are lacking threshold early in the game, you will have dead draws left and right and quickly lose any chance at board presence.
The majority of sealed Open Beta tourneys will require you to use 3 trades. Naturally 2 are better, but don’t count on that very often. Assuming you have 2 roughly equal trades and one “splash” trade, you’ll be shooting for an opening hand that gives you, including the 2 staple resources that start the game in play, 2 of each of the major trade’s resources and one of the splash resources.
If you are lucky enough to have constructed a deck whose splash trade has only threshold 1 cards, you’re way ahead of the power curve. Being able to start with that one resource in play not only allows for more useful cards in your deck, but ensures you’ll be able to play every one of those cards as soon as you draw them (and can afford the cost of course).

2. Character presence
If you have to go without a character to play on your first turn, you’re setting yourself up for a possible up-hill climb early. Worse, if you’re going second and your opponent does have a playable opening draw character, you will be playing catch-up until either you can play 2 characters in one turn or your opponent misses a drop.
Again assuming your playing a 50 card sealed deck, you should be packing no less than 12 and preferably up to 15 characters. With that, you should have no problem drawing or using your mulligan to draw a low cost character to start the game off.

3. Early advantage
There are many cards in The Spoils that are strong and cheap. From the Warlords alone you have Bloodcurdling Bulldozer, Flaming Barduse, Skewer, Target Practice, Eye Gouge, Dragon Juice and Hidden Sniper. Any of these cards can kill or disable one or more of your opponent’s characters. If you are running cards that either do direct character damage (kill cards) or bounce cards back to their owner’s hand, their impact is most effective in the early game. Just like the up-hill climb I described previously, if you can create this advantage for yourself you can take early control and create great board presence. And that’s almost never bad!

While there are doubtlessly many more theories regarding what should and shouldn’t be the goal of your mulligan, keeping these three ideas in mind should keep you pointed in the right direction.